What should be the legal minimum age for purchasing tobacco products? For Ohio and most of
the country, the minimum age is 18, as it has been for decades. But following a recent city
council vote, New York City will become the first major jurisdiction in the country to raise its
tobacco sales age to 21 next June.

New York City’s action is a reminder that there is no guaranteed right to smoke at 18. The
purchase of alcohol, handguns and marijuana (in those states where it is legal) already is
restricted until age 21, as is casino gambling. Setting the age for an inherently risky activity is
a policy judgment that each community must make for itself.

Does the minimum age of 18 still make sense for tobacco, or is it time to reconsider? What
policy will best protect our youth and young adults from addiction to a deadly product?

Several streams of evidence suggest that it is time to increase the minimum tobacco sales age to
21. First, although New York City will be the first major city in the U.S. to increase its
tobacco sales age to 21, several smaller jurisdictions already have taken that step.
The first to do so was Needham, Mass., a suburb of Boston, which adopted minimum sales age of 21 in
2005.

Following implementation of the law, smoking rates among Needham high-school students dropped
almost in half between 2006 and 2010, far outpacing the decline in surrounding communities. This
suggests that increasing the minimum sales age can be an effective tool to reduce youth tobacco
use, even when neighboring communities do not take the same action.

Second, contrary to common belief, we now know that youth smoking is driven not by
illegal tobacco sales (though such sales remain problematic), but by
legal sales. Legal purchasers ages 18 to 20 are currently the most significant
source of cigarettes and other tobacco products for 12- to 17-year-olds.

The higher minimum age of 21 would put legal purchasers outside the social circle of most
high-school students and thereby reduce the social supply available to adolescents. The
elimination of social sources likely accounts for much of the sharp reduction in smoking rates
observed in Needham.

Third, decades of research have shown the effects of increasing the alcohol sales age to 21. The
impact of this legal change, made by most states in the 1980s, was dramatic: Alcohol use
dropped significantly among high-school students, as did deaths caused by intoxicated drivers under
the age of 21.

The minimum age of 21 for alcohol — though obviously not perfectly enforced — has saved
thousands of lives. It is time to end the senseless disparity between the minimum age
requirements for alcohol and tobacco, especially since tobacco use kills five times as many people
in the U.S. each year.

In fact, 440,000 Americans still die each year from smoking and another 8.6 million suffer
chronic illness because of tobacco. Despite this, every day 3,000 American kids will smoke their
first cigarette and each year half a million will become addicted to nicotine.

It does not have to be this way. We know that almost no one starts using tobacco after age 21.
We know, too, that exposure to nicotine earlier in life — while the brain is still developing —
results in stronger levels of addiction and more difficulty quitting.

States and municipalities must make their own decisions about how to regulate tobacco
sales. But we often forget that
not acting is a choice as well, and it is a choice with significant consequences.

Raising the minimum sales age for tobacco will save lives, while failure to do so endangers our
youth. Indeed, it appears that the tobacco companies agree.

In a confidential memo, a Philip Morris strategist once wrote, “Raising the legal minimum age
for cigarette purchase to 21 could gut our key young-adult market (17-20).” Perhaps this is
one instance when we can take a tobacco executive at his word.

Micah Berman is assistant professor of public health and law at Ohio State University.